Understanding call stack

Question

I have the following method:

std::string MaterialLayer::getName()
{
    std::string idfMaterialName = this->material->getName() + std::string("-") +   cea::wstring2string(StringConverterHelper::toString((static_cast<double>((floor(this->thickness*1000)) / 10))));

    return idfMaterialName;
}

That is called through the following piece of code:

bsm::MaterialLayer * ml = this->o_bsm_material_layer;
std::string name = ml->getName();

When I do step into debugging on the second line ( where ml->getName() is called ), I entered the following method :

void Material::setName(const std::string &name)
{
    this->name = name;
}

But I cannot understand why it is called given that the called method is a setter on the Material class, while the original call is on a getter of the MaterialLayer class!!!

I specify that:

• I have already rebuilt all the solution
• all is compiled in Debug modality
• Visual Studio is 2010
• the parameter name of setName() is at the calling instant, this leads to the throwing of an exception later, and the need of this debug activity stemmed from the exception thrown, in order to understand why...

Answer 1

The only way I can imagine such a thing can happen is with an example like this:

class A
{
public:
  virtual void FuncA() ;
} ;


class B
{
public:
  virtual void FuncB() ;
} ;


void A::FuncA()
{
  printf("FuncA\n") ;
}

void B::FuncB()
{
  printf("FuncB\n") ;
}

int main()
{
  A a ;
  B *b ;

  b = (B*)&a ;

  a.FuncA();    // calls A::FuncA
  b->FuncB();   // b points actually to an A object
                // calling B::FuncB now actually calls A::FuncA

  return 0 ;
}

I suppose a similar thing happend in your program.